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- Meetings
- Schedule meetings involving brainstorming, problem solving or strategic thinking in the morning when productivity is usually highest.
- Schedule routine staff meetings, project updates, or information-only meetings during lulls in productivity. Better yet, forget the meeting and share or distribute information with email or memos.
- Always use an agenda and always start on time.
- Schedule meetings at odd starting times like 10:17 a.m. Try it and you'll be amazed how prompt, or even early, everyone is.
- Phone
- Answer it. By the time someone leaves a message, you listen to it, write down the details, and call back; you could have saved time by simply answering.
- Use voice mail strategically. Let your voice mail pick up when you have a pressing deadline.
- Keep the conversation focused. If a conversation is off-target, use your agenda to bring it back on track.
- Return all phone calls at once, if possible. You will naturally get right to point, saving you time.
- Use a wireless headset so you can use your hands to complete minor tasks.
- When you're going out of town and need to connect with co-workers, schedule a conference call to handle all matters once a day.
- Prioritize the order in which you return calls.
- Email
- Set aside a specific number of times a day to check and handle your email rather than doing it every time the impulse strikes you.
- Use the subject field to indicate contents and priority.
- Agree on acronyms to use that quickly identify actions. For example, your team could use to mean "Action Required" or for the Monthly Status Report.
- Include the word "Long" in the subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read.
- Sending a one-line text message to a Blackberry? Send the message in the subject line, using to signal the End of Message.
- Instead of forwarding a series of forwarded messages, write a brief summary of the key points or select and highlight the essential information. That way the recipient doesn't have to waste time scrolling through pages of information.
- Turn off your email program's email notification feature.
- Clutter
- Discard. If you tell yourself "I might need this some day," get rid of it permanently.
- Delegate. Hand off as much as you reasonably can. We cannot manage by doing it ourselves in the Information Age, so give away as much as possible.
- Delete. Stop any reports, memos, letters, minutes, catalogs, magazines, and junk mail that you don't need or have time to read.
- Organize files based on the frequency they are accessed: at least daily, monthly, yearly, and rarely.
- Interruptions
- Agree on a signal to let co-workers know when someone is not to be interrupted unless it is an emergency. For example, turn your nameplate around or hang a colored ribbon on your cubicle.
- Set aside "down time," periods of time every day where you cannot interrupt another employee, schedule a meeting, or answer your phone. Inversely, establish fixed office hours when you can be interrupted.
- Schedule regular check-in times for updates from people you must talk to often.
- Go into hiding. If you absolutely have to get away for a solid hour without being interrupted, find an empty conference room or borrow a vacationing colleague's office.
- Use verbal tactics and body language. Stand up when interrupted and immediately state how much time you have.
philoserf